Photo of the Week...3.9-3.16

If you hop in a van and take a short ride from our neighborhood you enter a small community just on the outskirts of town.  Structured buildings and street vendors turn to cow pastures and wooden shacks. The road is chaotic with potholes and loose pieces of concrete -- a reminder of its out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere status.

When arriving at so many barrios on this island I almost always have to take a deep breath in and prepare myself for the heartache that festers in me long after I leave.  Los Perez is not one of those places.  Although the signs of poverty are everywhere, a sense of peace lingers still.  I don't know if it is the humble people that live in the community, the rickety path you have to take to enter it or the laid back personalities of the children...but whatever it is, it is good.

I never feel anxious or worried about what will greet me.  In fact, I know there is one face that I will always look forward to seeing.  I've never met anyone that smiles with their whole self like he does.  He is never short on hand shakes or hugs and he always responds to a simple "how ya doin'" with "todo uva" or our version of "just peachy."

He knows every child in his nutrition center by their first and last names and knows where each of them lives.  He always starts their mealtime ritual by teaching the kids scripture.  I have witnessed first-hand, 70-some children re-sighting bible verses that most adults wouldn't even attempt.  He excitedly points out an 11-year old girl who has memorized 34 scriptures and counting.

Pastor Nico grew up in the church and always felt a real connection to God.  He watched his own father preach from the pulpit every Sunday.  He recalls a woman in his father's church who would always entice him to come to sunday school with the promise of a piece of candy.  It was that candy that kept him coming back.  It was that candy that brought him to a place where he heard God's word.  It's because of that candy that he knew God was calling him to be a pastor.  Nico started his ministry in Los Perez with that very same type of candy.  He knew that all he would have to do was get the kids to the church and God would do the rest.

And the kids came.

Photo of the Week-10/11-10/18

i used to think he was too strict with the kids. he needed to love them more and hug them more. he needed to greet them with a smile and a "Jesus loves you," as they entered the nutrition center.

i was naive.

felix loves these kids more than any of us could ever imagine. he loves them better than any of us ever could. yes, these kids need love and hugs and "Jesus loves you's" but more than any of that they need to learn respect and responsibility and discipline from someone who spends day-in and day-out with them. he shows them love, not just by offering them a passing hug or twenty minutes of holding their hand; but being in the trenches with them. going to hospital visits with them and sympathetically patting them on their head when their father was, yet again, dragged out of their home and arrested for drug possession.

the more time that i spend in The Hole the more i realize what kind of "job" Felix has. he told a group this week that out of the 600 or so families that live in The Hole about 90% of them are, in some way, involved in the drug business. whether it be selling or using or storing or guarding money or being the "debt collector." he is not just trying to win souls for christ. strangely, that could be the easy part. but what happens if they do want to accept christ and change their lives? the next step is saying to these already starving families that they need to leave their only source of income as well. do you want to tell them that?

eleven years of working in the trenches. eleven years of offering hope to people who's only hope lies in white powder and their next fix. eleven years of loving children born unjustly into households enslaved by darkness.

i think twice before i say to myself, "come on, felix, it's ok if he doesn't wear his sandals into the nutrition center." because if felix doesn't expect more from these kids, who will?